Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hey guys, just thought I'd post this here as a suggestion to have more interesting events. Feel free to tear it apart: I'm just spit balling.

There's a lot of controversy regarding both live events and unique ships, but I think I've come up with a way to put them together in a way that would likely create some interesting content and allow some custom ships to be put out. This would need to be put into lore context, but I think the recipe could be used in a lot of different ways to engineer more dynamic live events.

The basic idea is this. You take a unique ship: perhaps it's a modified version of an existing frigate or cruiser - it becomes available to all of Eve for several days only - perhaps sold by NPC vendors, or perhaps as an LP purchase from certain factions, or perhaps a loot reward found in certain exploration sites. The point is that for a few days, anyone can get them and even horde them if they want. They would be easy to get and hold very little value except that they're only available for a few days. You'd have to put a little thought into this part: they'd need to be slightly more available than comparable ships for a few days. When they're no longer available, they'll likely go up in value, but for now they'll be widely available. No one has an excuse for not stocking up if they want some.

Next, the event is planned. There would be a call out for experienced FCs to lead fleets. Anyone could sign up for this role - CCP would merely take in their info and plan an event for them in whatever time zone their fleet can be active for. Basically, as an FC, you're signing up to form a sanctioned fleet to go on a mission. There would be a few rules for these fleets though:

1) Only the sanctioned (limited edition) ships allowed.
2) Only one fleet allowed. No multi-fleet blobbing to get your rewards.

CCP would have to filter through the FCs to make sure the ones selected represented a large variety of players (so Goons couldn't schedule the same fleet 6 times for instance.) The ones selected would have an event set up for them in which if successful, they could earn a reward for completing beyond the usual mission rewards - you'd risk your collectable ship for an even more unique ship as a reward.

Finally, the event itself. These could be a number of things - something built around small gang warfare or large fleet combat. Perhaps some could be PvE (like an incursion) and sometimes thay could be PvP (two large fleets could be sent against eachother, unbeknownst to them!) - it'd be up to the FC to co-ordinate the fleet and guide it in the most appropriate manner. Completing the mission objective successfully would mean rewards for the entire fleet - now is when you pull out the super rare hulls, or expensive items.

My thoughts on this approach:
1) CCP would be using the community to create the content. This alone will drastically reduce the wrinkles in the game play, although their biggest concern would be watching for abuses of the system and stamping them out. Make it clear that rewards will not be given to players who did not act in good faith, and that the factions (NPCs) retain their right to withhold prizes if the players did not earn it.
2) By decentralizing the event, they can create fun mini events without turning people off to parts of the game when half the player base jumps into OICX and crashes the server, or has to slog through 10% tie-die.
3) The more CCP puts into this, the more they'll get out. If they have two different factions recruiting (say, Pirate factions vs. Concord) they could have events for everyone, and have highsec and lowsec actively fighting eachother, or working together.
4) This is also a great way to highlight and reward content creators - in this case the people who are good at recruiting and bringing people together for a common goal. This way, CCP will know who to come to to create more events in the future.
5) This will put CCP in a passive role when creating events - rather than an active one - which means it isn't limited by their staffs daily availability - events can now happen for NA time zones, Australia, europe and everywhere else without complaint. All CCP has to do is set it up in advance - reinforcing the appropriate server if necessary - and let it fly. Yes, there will still be surprises, but they wont be as big and hopefully wont require intervention.

Any thoughts?

That's the point, or at lease one of the points I'm trying to make. Much of CCPs mistakes that cause headaches and playerbase backlash is because they keep attempting centralised events on a single shard server. This puts out around 2/3rds of their player base every time (due to timezone issues) and causes no end of technical problems as half their playerbase attempts to do something at the same time.

As for the ship restriction, if the ship is easily available to everyone during and before the event, there shouldn't be a problem. The downside if it'll restrict players based on their skills, but it's simple enough to make the requirements very open ended or even give several options of ships.